BBC Sherlock: Death Wish

WARNING: Not graphic, but contains language suggesting depictions of violence.

Chapter 9: More of the Sister's Tale

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Once Gareth Bane and Dana Rath had recovered their composure, the doctor sat back in her chair. "This part of Winnie's recording is long," she warned the men. "And after a bit of prompting from me, she was unstoppable. I let her talk. I don't think she spoke so much in her life, at least after she went away. I doubt she had much opportunity to speak her mind when she lived in the wilds. You'll notice the more she talks on this recording, the more normalized she becomes. It's still a confusing mix of old dialect, but she loved reading and read bedtime stories to me often when I was little. She liked impressing me with fancy words. I think some of this helped her because, by the end of this recording, that Winnie finds her voice."

Rath smile ruefully and turned to the Detective Inspector, "Are we okay?"

Bane gave her an approving nod, then she hit play.

"Ready?" Dana was heard to ask when the recording resumed playing.

"Yis. Much, much betta than yisty. Not so war up today. A good day for this, DeeDee. Where wuz I?" Winnie's voice had strength and vigor. By the sound of it, she had rested far longer; twenty-four hours of palliative care in the hospital had revived her.

"I think you should explain how Harmen —"

"—Okay, I know!" Winnie jumped in. "Yis. I had seen him once or twice afore. Actual, that wuz afore you were born, DeeDee. I wuz un wee un and Gary's folks took us over to Thornham... That weren't until years later, at sixteen when I first hear him called the 'mystery man' by the maws…um…the girls. Yew know, I left home by then and moved to that hoddy-doddy flat, atop the village chemist's, to start my own life. I culdn't stay on the farm with Mum's husband, your Da, DeeDee. He wuz always mobbun about suffun. Layin' down rules, hated everythin' I do: my talk, my walk. He'd a get on to me fierce for shirkin' my chores, viewin' the American shows on the telly, or readin' 'trashy' novels. That I breathed the bloody air around him, that crazed him! He'd yell 'til he wuz red in the face: 'Yew undisciplined, ranny, headed for trouble,' He dint ortera dun it 'cause I got onto to him, I'd give it right back at him, cussin' like the very she-devil just to rile him…I dornt remember what we went on about haf the time…I shuld be a-gettin' high-larned educashun maybe? What to do with the whole on my life?—"

"I know, dear," Rath's sisterly voice soothed. "We don't need to talk about that."

"Alookin' back now, Dana, those squabbles atwin us weren't nothing like the beatin's from Harmen."

"Ah. Yes, a cruel irony to it, Winnie. But tell me more about that day you met Harmen."

"That day dint happen until a month later. Mid-summer and I wuz workin' on the stall in the village market assistin' customers. Yew wuz with me there! I remember like yisty, I useter mind yew sometimes. I liked workin' there and felt proud because I allus sold the most for the farmers, some from Unk George's and some from his neighbors. I also made and sold my own reed baskets. Remember, I larn yew to weave atwin idle times at the market? The other girls sold their crafts too, blankets, jewelry, embroidery; they spent all the time chattin', gossipin'...I stayed back. I dint like them…their mardle waggin tongues...'sides, they dint care for me."

"That's right," Dana recollected, "They were always giggling. Sometimes they looked at us as if we were the joke."

"Bitches!" Winnie rasped.

"They were cruel... but, I wasn't there that day he came," Dana coaxed. "Tell me what happened."

"Up 'til that day, Harmen's visits were a-rare, but the girls talked foolish and of little else— maddening as magpies—about how he'd higgle off his catch and the peat, then he come to the produce stalls and gawp—"

Winnie coughed but quickly recovered. "They 'love it' when he wuld round the various stalls. They shewed what they meant and act like him, touchin' the cabbages, the tomatoes, the summer squashes all sexy like. They squabbled, wantin' to win his heart-apumpin' gawp. Made them lightheaded and their hearts beat faster, they said. But when a father-brother-uncle-sweetheart step forrards to block them, that crazed them most of all!"

"I don't remember any fights among the men," Dana said doubtfully.

"There weren't, much to the relief of those knights in shining armor. Not un of those girls were worth un outright battle. They were all duzzy and empty-headed. They wuld've withered in the wilds. Not like me!" Winnie's words echoed pride, and the snicker that followed was low, scratchy, and mirthless. "Those girls were weak-kneed and stupid. I kept apart 'cause they called me 'nasty particular'—their words. Bein'as I weren't like them, I let them know, by mockin' them with my eyes. Guess, that weren't good, I see that now."

"They teased you, Win. They were jealous of how you could do everything better. And of course, they were infatuated with the Wild Man, even the married women were…so many were fooled by him, not just you," Dana reminded her.

"But I wuz the gret shanny—fool—on all! Un friend, maybe…maybe someun wuld've stept forrard," Winnie whipped back, hoarse with fury. She sniffed several times. When her voice returned, anger had vanished, replaced by a raw candor. "That first I lay eyes on him…that… the feelin'… wuz instant for me. I culdn't look away. I try to hide my curiosity, but he notice. I feel the other girls starin' fire at me 'cause directly he come ahind my produce stall, fondlin' the vegetables all sexy and all and chat me up. Bishy-barney-bee—ladybird—he call me. What he say ar'er—after—weren't about the squash and lettuce or even about my reed baskets; that I realise much later when my head wuz clear. 'Tight and strong,' That make my face burn with embarrassment. No idea when he first catched my eye what I wuz doomed. And unlike the others, there wuz no champion to break his spell on me."

"I am SO sorry, Winnie!" Dana said tearfully; the pain of those memories had reopened an old wound. "I tried."

"Yew're a child, not above nine. Even if yew hadn't been, yew alone culdn't do nothin'. Asides, there wuz no un who wanted to fight for me—yis, I know I wuz un unholy terror with a vicious temper—I got what I gave, I expect. And so I went with him two months ar'er we met—I wuz pull with excitement to follow the Wild Man, to spite those girls too, to find a life without rules, never… 'suspectin' the truth…the truth he wuz so good at hidin' for many… uppards twenty years."

"Yes, go on!" Sherlock hissed through gritted teeth, his frustration aggravated by the long backstory. Although he nodded in sympathy with Sherlock, John pressed a shushing finger to his own lips. Sherlock folded his arms across his chest as if in token that would restrain any more outbursts.

"Harmen weren't a horror, afore. Jollificearshuns—fun and games—it weren't, 'cause it wuz a hard life, but he wuz clever an' shewed me…gret… affecshuns for my sex, my strength and my fearlessness. He brought me gifts—rum things, I mean, odd things— he take from dusty crates and cupboards from long-dead Cains; he wuz genuine' tender, DeeDee; alettin' me visit yew and the village regularly, remember?"

"Yes," Dana agreed, "several times a year, for nearly five years."

"That long? Yis. Yew'right! Afore I wuz pregg with babies; he nev'r mobbed me that I come to see yew or go to the village. He dint mind the books I carry home and dint holler that I use scarce candles to read in the night. Yeah, he wuz fair to me, but...different, he WUZ rumman, a peculiar man. He hoolly yarmed… hungered for wittles…'nd more. Not just food, yew see, but for a-fukin', for a'venture, for a-hunting. He culdn't get enough of these.

"Time he let me go with him, he larn me how to catch the fish and the eels from the shallows. He shew me where the large cats lived in the grasses. Several were his pets. It wuz a new world…a happy time… for a time.

"But he change suffun savage ar'er a time, or maybe I just seen better the odd things he do, like when he snatch up a hopp'n toad and bite off its head or rent a fish in two. Un time he attack a bootiful harnser—beautiful heron—with gret viciousness. He wuz suffen raw—he put his hands around its neck so tight to quackle it, then ate it right afore me; I shew disgust. After that, he stopped takin' me to hunt with him. That's when happiness became fear.

"Als, when I loose so many babies tho I were constant preggs—constantly pregnant—he wuz savage, and bein preggs, moodiness made it hard for me to think. I read in my books women do fare like this, yew know, … on pregnancy. I keep alooking for excuses for him; I think: he'd had an odd upbringing; he wuz never taught proper manners; his gret body needed wittles. I keep worryin' about his holly yalm—his intense hunger—and wondered how I culd keep up with that. I knewed he wuz findin' food elsewhere no matter what I cook for mealtimes. I shied from him when he returned with his daily catch for me to clean and cook. I dint want to think wha, and yis, who he ate in the marshes, yet his traps were catching more than just wildlife. Not knowing wha, I fared it just the same and growed terrible afreard of him.

"He durst to win me back, he brung me books—for my love on readin'. He pluck irises for me in season or give me trinkets. Although after so many years, I knowed he had run out of Cain-family keepsakes to give me. What objects wuz unfamiliar, but I think he had traded for them in the markets. I yet realise he wuz stealing from local farmers…or from his victims."

"Victims!" Sherlock's voice interposed from behind the arm chairs, his hands folded before his mouth, his eyes intense with interest.

Rath turned her head and nodded up at him. She backed up the tape and replayed where he had interrupted her sister's story.

Winnie's voice had grown distressed. "Then, I find…his tribe. Run off—erosion yew callit—from those awful spring floods in the late-80s, bare their makeshift graves. I see the gnaw marks on their bones. I fare more than terrified, I wuz afreard for myself; for the first time I know what he wuz. I seen those same marks on lamb shanks and drumsticks of the wildfowl we ate. Up 'til then, I be ablamin' the large cats for the animal carcasses in the reeds.

"Horror open my eyes. 'Twuz no longer impossible to think the unthinkable about him. Human qualities in the man what pulled me had let go, replaced by that raving beast. And I wuz caught.

"I wuld've ran away, I almost do, until I see that wuz not just the marshes atrappin' me. Were I to find my way out, there wuz no place I culd go that he dint hunt me down. And wha if I do the impossible and get away? Wha then? I knowed that everyone in his path, be they shop owners in the village, families with children on farms, tourists in towns, hikers in parks were in danger from this murderous waarmin. And time I once felt I wuz better than them all and owed them nothing, I knowed at heart lettin' him loose to savage them wuz terrible wrong.

"So, I stay his wife, but I wuld not be his prey, no! I dussent leave until I kill him. I weren't stupid. I knowed it were risky. He wuz too large, too cunning for me to try 'n take him down; I weren't skilled enough to hunts agin him. Still I had to find some way, some weakness…then I knowed. Hunger wuz weakness. To kill him I must feed him constant-like—to keep him from eatin' me—and make these meals reasty and fosey. I hatch my plan for my own survival, but I need supplies and deadly ingredients!

"That were not hard to keep crazing him to get me sweets from his raids, flour, sugar, spices, butter, spirits, pesticides…enough to last me years… alon' with books to larn me recipes and concoctions to poison him. Time he wuz gone for days on a raid, I hamper his snares and traps. Yis, I booby trap them to do him harm. He lose atop his ear to a snare that snap unexpected; he crack an ankle time a heavy chain pull away in a wrong direction and he suffer smashed fingers time an iron rod come loose and fall acrorst his hand. So long as I wuz clever, he never look to me a-knowin' what I do.

"That wuz a coward's way, I know, a-hiddin' my 'traps' in the sweetest puddin's, the saltiest sauces, the greasiest meats, and garden vegetables fried in fats and a dash on poisons. Every day, I waz afreard he wuld see what I do and turn on me. Every day, I bloat him with excesses. Every day, I wish his death. That wuz my handiwork what give his many clouts and push him closer to his grave. That or face his hoolly raw, his frightening fury and feel his crushin' jaws on my throat. He shuld die. Yes, I admit murder in my mind an' heart. A-frearing him made me this way. I'm a monster, too, now. Maybe we wuz a good match after all. I keep a-feedin' jellies, jams and all kinds on preserves, allus with a pinch on poisonous potions to kill his appetite...an' him. I make him ill a bed, sicker and sicker, too sick to attack no more, but not sick enough to lie adown and just plain die. He still walk 'nd talk and order me. "

There was a long pause punctuated by several deep breaths to make up for Winnie's long-winded rant. Then she barked a laugh, cruel with irony. "To think it wuld take so long to murder the brute! Still not dun, yit."

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Dr. Rath shut off the recording. "That finished Winnie's narrative. It was her last good day. After that she never rallied. Eight days later, I lost her for good."

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